Website: CoDesign
Deadline for submission of intention to contribute: 30 June 2017

Guest Editors:
Simon Bowen, Newcastle University, United Kingdom
Roger Whitham, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Chris Speed, Edinburgh College of Art, United Kingdom
Simon Moreton, University of the West of England, United Kingdom
Abigail Durrant, University of Northumbria, United Kingdom

In this special issue, we seek to discuss how the value of design research programmes can be understood, communicated, and inform work as it progresses. Funders typically evaluate research according to impact that can be readily described in economic or societal terms. Whilst this indeed demonstrates value, it does not completely capture forms of value that collaborative design research produces, because often they are less amenable to measurement or do not produce quantifiable results within or soon after the funded period.

Design research is apt to be collaborative, involving diverse stakeholder groups and forms of knowledge, leading to outcomes that range in nature from discrete products and services, to new experiences, processes and infrastructures. This diversity and connectedness is a core strength of the discipline, but also a challenge in articulating its value to assessors, and indeed to the discipline of design research itself. There is an acute need to consider how collaborative design research understands and captures the value it offers to the world, addressing the demand for articulating quantifiable value without losing the distinctive theoretical and practical resources design research has to offer society.

We invite authors to consider, illustrate and reflect upon the practical and conceptual challenges and opportunities of understanding design research value. We invite authors to respond to the following issues and questions:

Conceptions of value in collaborative design research:
What forms of value are most relevant to design research?
How can value that is distributed socially, organisationally and temporally be understood?
How can understandings of value respond to co-produced and emergent forms of knowledge?

Practical problems of identifying and capturing the value of collaborative design research:
How has the effect and value of design and design research been successfully (or unsuccessfully) captured in existing work?
How might emergent, diffuse, infrastructural and dynamic forms of value be meaningfully captured?
What are the ethical implications of identifying and capturing the effect of design research?

Assessing value in collaborative design research:
Given constraints on the time and expertise of assessors, what forms of evidence could equip evaluators with the tools needed to understand value?
How have assessment methodologies been meaningfully employed, and what new research has this enabled?
How can assessment account for new and disruptive forms of knowledge and value?

Timeline:
March 2017: launch of the call
30th June 2017: Submissions deadline for intentions to contribute
31st August 2017: Notification of relevance sent to authors
30th of November 2017: submission of full papers
5th March 2018: post-review notification of accept / reject / revisions to authors
1st June 2018: Deadline for submission of revised papers
1st August 2018: Final selected papers to production
February 2019: Publication of the Special Issue